Elinor Nauen

On the plane back from Sioux Falls by way of MSP in February, I had a deep conversation with the young man sitting next to me, while we circled in the snow over NYC & finally didn't land at Boston. He was brilliant & gathered & wove huge heaps of knowledge from every direction. He's a classical pianist & is in some sort of hiphop/jazz group as well - his musical interests resembled his intellectual in being farflung & interrelated. He told me he was playing at Merkin Hall on April 17 & so I discovered his name: Mikael Darmanie (rhymes with harmony?) & went to see him last night. He played an hour of eclectic "Piano Dialogues" that included Schubert, Duke Ellington, Bartók, & half a dozen others, including 2 pieces he wrote. Riveting & I loved that he wanted us to feel the farflung, interrelated connections among centuries & genres. 

I didn't at all assume that he would remember me - I didn't know if he had even seen my face on the plane, in fact - so I began, You probably don't remember me, & he instantly said, the plane from Minnesota, you're the author, we had that beautiful conversation.

So he got even more points. 

I hope we become friends but even if we don't, I cherish the chance meeting & getting my mind blown open a little by all that the world contains. 

Who told me this morning that he has loved me for over half his (very long) life. I can't do the math in return but it's a lot of years of being enthralled & amused & swept away by the "man's man & a woman's dream" that is Johnny. 

A movie about a rescued penguin who proceeds to rescue all the humans around him, without being heart-warming. That's a tough thing to pull off, even if it's set in 1970s Argentina at the beginning of the brutal, murderous military dictatorship. Steve Coogan was perfect as the English teacher who drifted into a hoity-toity boys' boarding school in Buenes Aires, and the penguin should get an Oscar. I never want to say too much about a movie except to say see it or skip it. The Penguin Lessons: See it! 

Some poems of mine are now up in the swell online journal R&R, accompanied by the elegant, sunny art of Baltimore artist Mason Owens.  

The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.

~ Jean Cocteau

One of our students at English in Action asked why her friend laughed when she said she was going to start drinking at noon & would meet her a few hours later. We finally figured out that to say "let's go drinking" or "to start drinking" means that the drinking is the point. By contrast, to suggest "let's meet for a drink" is suggesting a meet up, with alcohol incidental - it's the getting together that's the point. The Russian repeated my "let's have a drink" as "let's get together for a few drinks." His idea of a drink was to have a few of them. He didn't even hear himself editing it. Russian drinking culture. 

I started my project of getting to know New York City by taking the 7 train to 103 St-Corona Plaza and walking a few blocks to the Louis Armstrong House Museum. You can take a tour of his actual house but I stayed across the street at the really well done visitors center & learned a lot about his life and influence. My favorite single item was a 6-page hand-written letter about living on the block for 29 years. He described the neighborhood kids watch him "ooze" out of his garage in his Cadillac and follow him to the Chinese restaurant, where they asked for so many autographs that his food was cold, & he had to go home where his wife fried up a dagwood sandwich for him.

I never was all that crazy about his music, kinda corny, though I know it's brilliant and foundational, but I sure am crazy about him. What an ambassador for love and fairness. 

The neighborhood I walked through was almost entirely Hispanic, & from the shop signs, largely from South America. According to the demographics I looked up, Corona is roughly 75% Hispanic, 10% each Asian & Black, and 5% white. 

Having a leisurely & delicious breakfast at Balthazar with an old friend reminded me of going there once, long enough ago that baseball news was finally in the Times at the end of a baseball-less winter. It was snowing softly & I had a bowl of thick hot chocolate. And it was my birthday. Today it was eggs, coffee, & good conversation with plenty of laughing. The man next to us ate a sticky bun & a plate of bacon.

I've lived in New York long enough that the sibillant Puerto Rican accent that was ubiquitous in my neighborhood & that I hardly hear any more is just as nostalgic as the soft Lakota accent of my childhood. It's the madeleine of my ear. 

You can cut the branches of the tree of liberty, but you can't destroy the roots because they are too strong and too many.
~ Toussaint L'Ouverture (1743-1803), Haitian revolutionary 

I dreamed my cat, Lefty, asked me to call him Mr. Money when we were out in public. I was carrying him in my arms down 10th Avenue at the time. 

What a difference a week makes. Last week I was singing the praises of my post office & today I got the most horrible employee I have ever encountered in any business or context. She yelled at me for believing what her coworker told me, told me different things, including that my large envelope is not a large envelop, said it was $4.63 not $4.61 and I should just walk away she couldn't help me, wasn't wearing her required name tag & refused to tell me her name. Oh, I am not going to relive how rude she was. She has given me a hard time every single time I have had the misfortune to be in her line. What is her problem? What a miserable life she must lead. 

They say all of us are "temporarily abled" (if that). That we should prepare for illness, accident, disfigurement, paralysis ~ you know, all that human flesh is heir to. Until that day, like the day we die, we kind of expect to be an exception, right? I've been fine for mumble-mumble years. Instead of thinking that the odds are getting shorter of something happening, I think the odds are longer of things continuing as they've been. Despite being an accountant's daughter, I also think that the odds are always 50-50: either I win or I lose. Ah, we have glided to the safe, delightful harbor of numbers & away from the messy, embarrassing, self-pitying swamp of disease. I'm fine now, I really am. 

On Monday afternoon at around 3, I strongly felt like I had to go home. I never leave early but I guess for once I "listened to my body" & packed it in. Good thing. As soon as I got home, I "kastet opp," which is I bet not too Norwegian to get the gist without me getting lurid. (I'm looking at you, Michael Angelo frozen eggplant parm for breakfast.) Then I felt crappy & tired & then I felt better & then I didn't feel like doing anything even though I did feel pretty much OK & then I did my laundry & I guess I'm back from the near-dead, which is really the most disspiritng place to be & I see why all my female relatives are fine & then die at age 97 ~ the minute something goes wrong, they (I) don't see the point of continuing. O world, you had best hope I never become chronically ill or even sick for more than a couple of days. I will wear out my welcome from even my most devoted friends. 

In Charles Mackay's 1877 book The Gaelic Etymology of the Languages of Western Europe and More Especially of the English and Lowland Scotch, and of their Slang, Cant, and Colloquial Dialects, I ran into the curious low slang word chickaleary "aged pedestrians on winter mornings" (evidently, a collective noun).

~ Anatoly Liberman, from Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology

Well, it seemed like that yesterday when the Yankees beat the Brewers 20-9.

I'm so happy to have a game rolling in the background. I've been listening since spring season started. Because MLB blacks out all local games, for the last couple seasons I've only had radio, & I put on any old game if the Yanks or Twins aren't playing. I just want to hear the sounds of the game. =

I've missed you, baseball! 

I love winter but there's something to be said for spring & summer. 

Have I talked about my obsession with Wegman's hummus? It's the best hummus ever. They have these flavors: olive (my favorite), chipotle, everything bagel, caramelized onion, pine nut, sweet potato, plain, Moroccan lentil, kale & white bean, lemon dill, & some I have yet to try: roasted red pepper, dill pickle, garlic, spicy red lentil, vegetable, cilantro, eggplant. No doubt I'm forgetting a flavor or 2. It's crack hummus, absolutely irresistible. It took me a while to warm up to Weggy's, but the hummus carried the day. 

Went to a new eye doc today, Johnny's in fact. I refrained from telling Dr. Fang she was in the wrong branch & should've been a dentist. Does she hear that all the time? I need cataract surgery but no rush. But don't drive at night, she warned. That's not too bad & not hard at all, since I almost never drive. Dilated so a little woozy now. 

My post office, 10003, Cooper Square on 4th Ave & 11th Street, used to be the worst P.O. in the city, maybe in the country. Everyone they couldn't fire ended up there & they were so rude & incompetent & stupid. Good luck getting your package that they couldn't be bothered to deliver. The lines were as long in the summer as everywhere else at the holidays. 

Good news! They are nice, helpful, efficient, friendly these days. It's been like that for a while, not because they fear for their jobs. It no longer ruins my week to have to go to the P.O. 

Just one more late-to-the-party hater of the hideously ugly cybertruck. Which is much bigger than I expected - finally saw one in person, parked blocking a hydrant, which is exactly what we expect of these varmints & the varmints who drive them.

The Gray Notebook, Josep Pla (1897-1981), Catalan writer

Yesterday I heard myself say, Why would I ever read anything else? 

A couple of excerpts:

The people of the Ampuerdan are probably the most enthusiastic and elemental in all of Catalonia—provided their enthusiasm doesn't have to last too long. (p 23) 

Today Enric Frigola said that he knows a big fat man with a sensitive soul who feels immediately relieved of all material needs and worries, in a state of grace, whenver he loosens his belt a notch. (p 42) 

Bankers are gentlemen who lend you an umbrella when the sun shines. When it rains, don't count on their help. (p 52)

There are long descriptions of people, places, houses, parties, drinking, studying—everything you can think of. Aphorisms, musings, family lore. It's hard to convey the leisurely but thrilling flavor of the book without reading a lot of it. 

I know, I know, I'm probably setting myself up again for heartbreak. But we've got pigeons, oh my. This time they are roosting on the ground, right outside my office door. So far, a week or so in, they have managed to fend off the rats that I'm sure are sniffing around. This time there are 2 eggs & I'm excited to watch them hatch & grow. But to nest on the ground! Every morning I come in with my fingers crossed that they'll still be there.

I started my new volunteer gig yesterday, as a tutor working with new immigrants with intermediate English skills. It's supposed to be 2 hours of conversation, so they can practice speaking & other skills in a supportive environment. The 3 students last night were from Japan, Colombia, & Russia. We tutors are supposed to talk no more than 20% of the time, but our group leader had brought in vocabulary words & we 3 ended up discussing the nuances & contemporary usages of those words more than the students practiced them. The Russian did try them out in sentences, which I thought was exactly the right way to incorporate them into her vocabulary. I liked everyone & it was super-fun for me to spend a couple of hours talking about words & language. So much fun that I wonder if I'm helpful to them at all. 

No, I haven't taken an interest in ale & I don't know what IPA means in PubWorld. I'm talking about the International Phonetic Alphabet. It's how opera singers, for example, sound like they are fluent when they don't know a word of the language they are singing in. I think it would help with Norwegian pronunciation, beyond the listen-repeat-listen-get a little closer maybe-listen-try again try again-listen-have no idea if I sound anything like what I'm going for. It's daunting: not only the many symbols but matching them to the sounds, learning mechanically to make those sounds. I wonder if there's a class...? Any suggestions, anyone? 

I love Norwegian & I love studying it & languages in general. I wish I knew a lot of 'em but Norwegian (so far) is the only one that I relish learning every nook & cranny of; the others I wish I could open my head & have it poured in. Yesterday, my teacher & I were talking about the nuances between two words & without planning the sentence, I said something that had wordplay in it. Nothing particularly brilliant but I said a complicated technical thought in Norwegian. We looked at each other: did that just happen?!?! A small moment & a huge one. 

People who have studied spoken languages understand this, I'm sure. I had 4 years of Latin, plus shorter stints of Sanskrit, Biblical Hebrew, and Old & Middle English. Speaking in, & even more, thinking in, another language is new. Thrilling. My head explodes all the time. 

Very glad to be at the Kenneth Koch celebration last night at the New School, seeing friends & listening to reminiscences. Highlights were Ron Padgett's "Traveling with Kenneth"; a succinct & evocative account of finding the art (in the widest sense) scene in the 1950s by a former Paris Review editor, Maxine Groffsky; Charles North reading 2 uncollected poems; & a sweet short video from Alex Katz, frail but full of fire. His former students revered him & still do. Because the evening was homage, there was no acknowledgement that of the 13 participants, only one was a woman & one was non-white (who had never met Koch & didn't make clear why he'd been asked). An old friend I hadn't seen in ages said he was a great teacher but unsupportive, even nasty, to the women students. He was Of His Times, to be sure. 

The world is not a "prison house," but a kind of spiritual kindergarten where millions of bewildered infants are trying to spell "God" with the wrong blocks.

~ Edward Arlington Robinson

thanks to Aram S. for the quote

I don't have deep insights, just liked this. 

I found this li'l treasure from high school & scanned it to send to Marc when we got back in touch a few years ago. I don't remember anything about doing this magazine or newspaper, & now there's no one on this page but me who would know. Lucy died in 1973, Craig about 15 years ago, & Marc this week. Nancy Cely is not a name I recognize at all. 

Such a good poet & a mensch, with a beautiful wife. He read the other night from his new memoir about his childhood friend, the poet Dick Gallup, & poems from his new book, Pink Dust. A satisfying evening of words. Grab a book or 2 of his & you'll be glad you did. Here's one of my favorite poems of his:

December

I will sleep

in my little cup

I often criticize people who don't travel. I know more than a few people who have been to more countries than states. It's your country! I insist. You should see it. Every state is beautiful & various. 

And yet, how well do I know my own city? Parts of it, sure, but I'm sure there are many neighborhoods I've never been to, if I've even heard of them. Today I went to a funeral at a church on Adam Clayton Powell Jr Blvd & 133rd st. Not an area I'd ever been to, as far as I know. (The funeral was beautiful, with some good singing & a genuine fire-and-brimstone eulogy. "I'm not preaching her eulogy—she lived her eulogy." It was a friend's mother who died, not someone I knew, so I was only human-condition sad.)

I used to have a plan to ride all the subway trains to the end of the line & see what was there. Or get off at a random stop & see what I see. Maybe this spring & summer I'll give it a shot. I've been to 49 states—I'd like to explore 49 NYC communities. 

Update: NYC has 339 separate communities! Some are only a couple of blocks & I've been to quite a few, but my goodness, there's a lot out there!